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Are talibés in Dakar, Senegal child trafficking victims or religious scholars on the path to humility? [1]

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Date: 2023-03

Meanwhile, the anti-trafficking stream’s interest in stopping begging contradicts the state’s other, concurrent approach. With funding from the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank, the daara modernisation project aims to bring a hybrid curriculum uniting Qur’anic memorisation and basic primary level education into the daaras. It would incorporate daaras into the national education system for the first time.

While the government has established a small number of new ‘modern daaras’ under this project, the move towards regulation and support of existing daaras has been stalled for years now because of a fight over the text of the legislation needed to make that project possible. Serigne daaras were involved in its production, and only agreed to sign off on the draft legislation it if a proposed clause on banning begging was removed. It was, but despite that it has never been put to a parliamentary vote. It’s not quite clear why the government hasn’t moved it to the next stage. Some say it’s because the resources to fund the daaras aren’t available, while others believe politicians lack the political will to regulate the daaras.

In any case, the removal of begging disappointed the anti-trafficking crowd. This has frustrated those leading the process, as they see the removal of begging from the legislation as a minor point in the context of the whole project. As a staff member at the Inspection des daaras put it, “begging, it’s not us”. As in the anti-trafficking approach though, this view glosses over the fact that, except in the most extreme cases, there is no clear distinction between the serigne daara of the Qur’anic schools that could be modernised, and the serigne daara that are portrayed as child traffickers.

What to do with daaras?

International mechanisms such as African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the US Trafficking in Persons reports instruct the Senegalese government to modernise daaras and support Qur’anic teachers while also prosecuting child traffickers. This forces actors to interact in contradictory ways with the same serigne daaras and is a recipe for continued failure.

Although it is clear that the factors behind the talibés’ begging do not fit neatly into any issue-specific silo through which resources are channelled into interventions, such as education or anti-trafficking, the lack of coordination across the sector prevents any one initiative from tackling the issue. To move forward, more nuance is needed in the ways initiatives understand begging talibés and their serigne daara, along with more engagement of the parents of talibés and those who give alms to them in city streets. The idea of the impostor posing as a Qur’anic teacher needs to be put aside. Until it is recognised that there is not always a clear line between a legitimate serigne daara and someone who exploits children, the blame will continue to be placed on someone no one can identify.

Taking a unified approach towards begging doesn’t mean being against Qur’anic education. Eventually, the state should be able to take a zero-tolerance approach towards daaras that practice begging, while supporting those that provide a quality religious education. But as the last attempt to enforce the law that bans profiting from children’s begging was met with outcry by influential religious leaders and their supporters, leading the government to quickly drop the policy, sustained and serious efforts to change how begging by talibés is perceived need to come first.

Perhaps the outlook is not entirely pessimistic. There is some evidence that the impunity of the most abusive serigne daaras may be waning. Human Rights Watch have documented a small number of prosecutions (eight convictions in 2016-2019), though their sentences have generally been light and no arrests were made in 2020-2021. A USAID and UNODC funded project engaged municipal governments in several parts of Dakar to introduce byelaws forbidding begging with support from the local community. Despite these good intentions however, children continue to be seen in the streets.

Without concentrated effort to coordinate all the different interventions and move beyond oversimplified narratives to a holistic approach, as well as sustained political will to change the system, talibés are likely to continue begging.

The author’s doctoral research on this issue was made possible by ESRC funding.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/are-senegals-talib%C3%A9s-religious-scholars-or-child-trafficking-victims/

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